Category: Uncategorized

It’s not a strip club PER SE…

But I had to laugh at the Newport Beach Film Festival’s very O.C. fundraising event. Just got this in the mail:

The Newport Beach Film Festival invites you to celebrate the art of intimate apparel showcased live on male and female models in a photo gallery setting. DJ, hors d’oeuvres and hosted bar provided. Sponsored by Level Vodka, Karl Strauss, Riviera Magazine, Vic Huber Studios, Quartararo & Associates and Bloomingdale’s.

I guess technically it isn’t a stripper show if there aren’t any poles.

No.

  1. The world is falling apart at the seams. Find something important to protest. It shouldn’t be hard.
  2. “Fans of the novel and/or the movie are, obviously, at a greater advantage because they already know what “Remember, remember the 5th of November” means.” So will all residents of Great Britain and the Commonwealth and anyone literate in English. Put down the Gameboy and read a book without pictures someday.
  3. Shut up shut up shut up!

The light was good today.

The Canivore Grill Closeup
Bad typo, especially for an Asian restaurant.
If you know your Latin roots it sounds like they’re serving spaniel sashimi.

Chat sur la Table
I am blessed with a photogenic cat

THE HOUSE WITH THE CONCRETE YARD
The House with the Concrete Yard
Who lives here? Why have a solid concrete yard with a chain link fence around it? I have never seen these people. Now the house is up for sale. Mysterious.

Weekend and first bit of Zen.

That was a good weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday were mini patio reunions courtesy of two birthdays. I got to see people I never see and even on the sacred patio itself, which I never touch now. Plus, Zen.

On Sunday I went to an introductory Zen workshop at the Zen Center of Orange County. I recommend it for anyone local who’s interested. It was a four hour event with a break, and included an introductory lecture and discussion, some guided and unguided meditation, a mindfulness exercise of sorts, and a lot of information about possible next steps.

I found the meditation much easier than I had expected. Part of the reason I went at all was that after a year of neurofeedback, EMDR, and some other somatic therapies my brain is a lot calmer. I’d always been the guy with the constantly ringing phone in his head. A few times in my life I had tried meditation with varying amounts of dedication and knowledge, and always failed or at least felt like a failure. I could do the “Relaxation Response” in which you just relax every part of your body starting with the toes and then do it again, etc., and get some kind of detached or floaty state, but that was clearly not what any of the meditative traditions were doing. It was either a way to get to sleep or a way to relax when I couldn’t.

Most of the reason I went to this workshop was to get direction and instruction on zazen (sitting meditation) and they were very helpful. Posture is very important and it’s great to have someone looking at you and helping you with what you can’t see about the way you’re holding yourself. When I got the posture close to “right” it was much more comfortable than I thought. Some of the muscles complained about their new roles but I could do the short 15 minute sessions we had yesterday. The most difficult part was the eyes, which in this particular tradition are half-closed and unfocused, looking down at a 45 degree angle. My eyes wanted to be open or closed, not anything in between.

Part of the deal when you do the workshop, which is $60, is that you get a free month of sessions at the Center. I’m going to follow their suggested schedule of home meditation and visiting the Center this month to keep this fresh and see how it goes. I will probably continue to visit there if things work out well.

Maybe the best benefit of the year of Hell doing neurofeedback will be a brain that can handle zazen.

Political Paralysis of the American Weenie Social Democrat

I feel politically defeated. I’m on the left end of the Democratic party, more of a social democrat type. My adult life began just as we started to lose ground, and my country has gone inexorably to the right since.

When I was younger, I voted and volunteered and protested, and wrote. Now that I am older and more established, I vote and volunteer and protest and write, and contribute. It doesn’t seem like enough.

At this point I consider my country’s government illegitimate and lawless. The opposition, my party my whole life, is both weak and collaborating. There are very few individual legislators who represent anything like my point of view. I wonder what cause my contributions to the party will support, other than the personal careers of some prominent traitors.

Worst of all, the actual opposition seems totally fragmented. There are various small organizations who all want money and support from me and appear to have my values, but they’re tiny and ignored. The radical left has been navel-gazing since 1969 and the more moderate types I resonate with have no voice.

My question for the group mind is: What can I as an individual do that makes the most impact on this situation? I’m horrible at politics and I do so poorly in political organizations that the whole prospect of getting more involved is both frightening and depressing. It’s like church; as soon as you think you agree with your compatriots someone will bring up a divisive issue and the whole thing falls apart.

Is there a single-issue or focused group that deserves my entire financial and personal support, that’s making a big difference? A candidate or politician perhaps not in my locale who deserves that kind of focus? A cause where I can work without being disillusioned in 30 seconds? I invite suggestion and comment.

I am tired of feeling defeated and marginalized. I’d like to take some ground.

Editorial Note: flamewars in the comments will be deleted. so don’t even.

Zubie’s, or a trip to Grandma’s

Had dinner at Zubie’s Chicken Coop last night in celebration of berg74‘s birthday. Happy birthday, Dan! It was great to see him and other friends I’ve missed, including a rare appearance from Jeremy & Vicka.

When I was a kid we used to drive all the way out to Lancaster on some holidays to visit my Aunt Midge (Mildred) and Uncle Lee. They were actually great-aunt and uncle, and were old my whole life. We would sit in their drawing room and munch on Jordan almonds and talk, and then sit down to a classic Midwestern/Southern holiday meal of some kind of Large Meat, potatoes, overcooked vegetables, two kinds of bread, a ceremonial salad, and great big glasses of iced tea. It was a trip back down the family tree, and they’d tell us stories of the family going back to the turn of the century and before. That side of the family had come to California on covered wagons, so the family stories were and are fascinating.

Zubie’s is that place to me.

People who know old Orange County punk music may dimly recognize the name, because their original place is mentioned in the Vandals’ “Urban Struggle” as the cowboy bar. It was next door to the old Cuckoo’s Nest punk club, and the cowboys and punks used to get into it, which inspired that song.

That Zubie’s is long gone, but the family has the Chicken Coop restaurant, which took over a former French place in the 90s sometime. It’s eccentric. They serve pretty big portions of standard American home cookin’ cheaply, which is an attraction. A full chicken dinner is $8.95. Their specialty is fried chicken but they don’t call it that; it’s “broasted,” which is something old-fashioned restaurants advertised in my 1970s childhood. I think it must have been a fad around 1960. It’s a brand name process for pressure-cooking chicken as you fry it that supposedly results in less grease. No one under 40 even knows that broasted chicken is fried chicken.

The sides are mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans. By mashed potatoes I mean very, very smooth whipped potatoes and bland light-brown gravy. The beans are prepared the way my grandmother did, southern style: a bit overcooked but with enough salt and grease that you do not care about that.

There is a house salad that comes with your dinner. The salads got all confused but I think that’s what I got. For some reason it had shrimp in it. It was the iceberg lettuce salad of my childhood with a tremendous quantity of dressing. There were also rolls which were very soft and warm and required immediate buttering.

The chicken was pretty good if a bit dry, and there was a decent amount of it. The other diners got more food and many of them had to ask for to go boxes. Apparently overfeeding is one of the attractions of Zubie’s. I’m glad I got the right amount of food, myself.

The menu was full of weird quirks and errors. The “Oyster Bar” page was also labeled as the To Go menu, and had two entries for fish taco at the same price with different descriptions: one was the “Grande” and other was advertised as having two filets and being the house favorite. The pizzas were advertised as being sixteen feet in size due to an apostrophe/quote confusion; it was not stated whether that was diameter, radius, or thickness. When the check arrived it was totally incomprehensible so we just did our best and made sure enough money was there.

As you probably figured out most of the clientele was over 65, with a few families. In general it wasn’t a restaurant; it was a trip to someone else’s grandmother’s house. The food was home-style in both good and bad ways, there weren’t many options, and everything was up to the standard of a conservative farm-style dinner in 1960. I assume they remain in business because of old people and because of the bar.

It’s not the best restaurant in town but it’s a gem. Mostly because it’s a little piece of my great-aunt Mildred’s generation sitting smack in the middle of go-go millionaire decadent Newport Beach within sight of nightclubs where strippers and mortgage brokers are doing tequila body shots and stuffing coconut shrimp into their faces. I like the contrast.