Category: Uncategorized

Hi Dr. Nick!

My pal trinnit is in Boston to have his brain operated on. Again. This magical journey apparently started with Amtrak being 2 hours late getting him from Lake Effect, NY to Boston (joy).

He’s got the best possible doc at the best possible hospital, but brain surgery isn’t ever any fun. Light a candle for Pete. Man, NF2 is a bastard of a disease.

The coffee was no good either

Listening to this song reminds me that Sandy Denny is who Natalie Merchant wants to be when she grows up. But by Natalie’s age, Sandy was already dead. Sorry, Nat. Anyway, Nat, you’re going to hell for fucking up “Because the Night”. But that’s not what we’re here for today. We’re here about Sunday nights.

Sunday nights are traditionally a depression peak for me. Back in the 80s for a while I lived at the UCLA Co-Op, which was a decaying pile of shit full of poor students. My room mate was an Iranian communist revolutionary and a very unpleasant guy. I kept a nocturnal schedule and couldn’t find a job. Most nights I would take the hour walk down to Dolores Restaurant on Santa Monica Blvd and talk to the waiter and read a mystery until dawn, then walk back. I nearly committed suicide that summer.

Ever since then the dullness, absence of media and general quiet of Sunday nights have been a depression trigger for me; I easily slip back into the summer of 1986, which believe me is not where I need to be. It’s the Dark Night of the Soul, the Naked Lunch, the Dreaded Veal Cutlet. Maybe not that last one.

With no car, no money, and as the CHP says about stranded motorists “no friends no family no fun”, it was pretty wretched. As bad as things can be now, it’s no 1986.

You killed donut!

I had a nice time visiting the house of jonpants and meeting fairietard and others. Good conversation, nice people. I’ve been meaning to write some stuff about the Valley on Content Goes Here and it was interesting to cruise down Sherman Way afterwards and reacquaint myself with the valley vibe.

Also, I didn’t bring anything because I am lazy, and they still fed me! And the_hippy_chick made some good enchiladas. Thanks, all.

Today is a big glum gray boring sludgy mess. Poking it with a stick now. Yep, just sludgy. I think I’ll go to D’s and at least people-watch now.

List of unrelated observations and beans

  • Mozilla Firebird is a pretty good browser. Fast and doesn’t blow up.
  • Cannelini beans cooked with fennel rule.
  • Steve Lopez‘ column on our local bonehead racist legislator is great.
  • My new pressure cooker is amazing! I am now a pressure cooker commercial. Especially since the beans listed above.
  • I can’t recommend 20 years of loneliness, sexual inhibition, and missed opportunities as a lifestyle for anyone else, but it’s worked for me! *
  • As a child I believed that avocadoes were a root vegetable.
  • I am going to go listen to “Sad Eyes from Van Nuys” by Ferdinand very very loud now.

*And by “worked for me” I mean stunted my life and left me approaching middle age in a state of existential despair.

Dining Out Around Town Vol I: Denny’s Prime Rib

My friend Pretty Boy Dave (PBD) used to work at Denny’s. Dave has worked quite a few food service jobs in the past (he has been known to say “I hate all people who eat food”), but this one was particularly good.

One of the neighborly things Denny’s does is have occasional Prime Rib specials. The prime rib is cheap ($6 or something), and it is a large portion. Lots of people come in, especially old folks on fixed incomes.

Some time before this, the meat arrives from Headquarters. It is a gigantic lump of stuff that could not have been cut from any animal. Seams of fat circle it, and it is frozen like a Mongolian steppe, hard and smooth like glass. As Dave described it, it’s a type of Stonehenge Plinth of meat, suspiciously regular and large. It is heaved into the freezer and kept there.

On the first day of the special, the Meat Lump is dragged out of the freezer and dropped into the dish sink, which is the only container large enough to hold it. A great clunk is heard. Then warm water is run over it slowly for the entire day. As people request the Prime Rib, an appropriately sized chunk is hacked off the slowly melting meat-berg.

This meat is then microwaved until it is hot. However, at this point it looks like precooked defrosted road accident. Therefore, it is dunked in a vat of boiling “au jus” sauce for a few minutes. When dragged out of this, it is soft, tender, juicy, and just what the victim customer ordered.

Finally the finished product, a lovely slice of hot savory ass Prime Rib, is served.

Dave says that occasionally someone would ask for an end cut and he would have to run in the other room to laugh.

Finally, at the end of the day, the lump is taken out of the dish sink and thrown back into the freezer to become 100% meat-berg again. Since the prime rib special is off between 11 pm that night and 5 pm the next day, it has time to freeze up before it is yet again thrown in the sink and drizzled.

And that’s how nauseating giant chickenheart chunks of mystery meat saved Christmas, kids.

HOLY

TO PARAPHRASE THAT ONE JERKCITY ABOUT MERVYNS

DEAR MOTHERS MARKET COSTA MESA

YOU ARE PLAYING THE WORST EVER SOFT AND MELLOW HITS OF THE 1970S ON THE PA SYSTEM AND NOT SELLING ALCOHOL BY THE GLASS OR OTHERWISE YOU PATHETIC WEASELS ITS ONE OR THE OTHER!!!!

THERE AINT NO GOOD GUY THERE AINT NO BAD GUY THERE’S JUST YOU AND ME AND A DOG NAMED BOO AND I’M STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH OH GOD THE BURNING
—
ignatz