Steve And Hot Girl #135 That Paul Could Have Dated But Did Not

Steve's nickname was 'Kushie'. Those who knew him know why, and I am not going to explain it here.

He lived across the hall from me my freshman year with his room mate and best friend from high school, Peter.

He banged up the door to his '74 Impala, so he says, "wanna go to a junkyard in B'ville and get me a new one?" I says OK.

We get to the head of 481 at the bottom of Fulton and passing us is a nice looking lady driving a similar heap. I see she has a sticker on the bumper that says 'Oswego' so I tell Steve to pull up next to her. Quickly, I scribble my address (254 Cayuga) on a piece of paper and hold it up. She smiles as we pass, and starts laughing. Steve and I argue over who she was hot for.

A week later there is a personal in the school paper: "To the guys in Cayuga hall who passed me on 481. The driver was cute but the passenger was cuter. When can we meet?" We never did meet.

Yet another story of how Paul coulda hooked up and didn't. Man was my hair long then, too.

Daddy, What's A 'Sommelier'?

Quick answer? A professional, legal pusher.

Long answer? Sit back.

When last I was in LA (of all the two times I was there) Jennifer took my brother Pat and me to Sona, a fine restaurant with something called “matched pairings” on the menu. That means that you get an n course meal with n wines served – one chosen for each dish.

The person who chooses the wines is a sommelier. He chooses the wines for the restaurant in general, and also for this special menu.

We ordered such a dinner at Sona that night. Jennifer and Pat are accomplished wine aficionados, gourmands, and culinarians. I’m just a wino (recovered wino, thank you). They use words like “bouquet” and “esters” which for me mean something about flowers and a stuff that plastic is made of. They talk about food having texture which makes me want to puke.

It went a little something like this. We sat down and read the menu, and the waiter explained the matched pairings bit, if we wanted that. Pat said yes and Jennifer agreed. I went along with it because I’m a philistine who tries to look like he’s not.

Each course comes out with the chef explaining what he’s serving you as food, and the sommelier or his assistant carrying a bottle of alcohol flavored to go with what the chef made. For example:

Chef Soandso comes to the table and the waiter serves the dish. The sommelier stands by, ready to pour. The chef speaks, “this is curried pig’s throat, with a demiglace of duck breath.” Pat and Jennifer make approving sounds and grunts, which I try to keep up with. The sommelier steps forward, sets the proper glasses (you know there are PROPER GLASSES for each wine, right?) pours the stuff, and speaks, “For this course we have chosen a Corsair de Ganache, 1997. It is a light red made mostly of Hongo grape grown in the Frappe steppes of Anglobonia. The locals there stomp the grapes by foot, kicking off a week long festival of grape stomping that starts with a local dwarf stomping the first of the vintage.” He pours the wine and swirls it around the glass, smelling it afterward, and indicating very strongly that this is the behaviour we should also partake of…or at least I got that idea because Jennifer and Pat start doing it, too, and making more. "We chose this wine because the natural banana, sequoia and burnt sienna tones compliment the pork [he wouldn't say 'pig' now, would he?]. The cement-tone finish matches the gustatory tannins. Enjoy"We take a bite of the food, eat the wine, and I try earnestly to keep up and sound intelligent.

10 bite-size pieces of candied offal later, I have had as manyglasses of wine, and the dessert comes with dessert wine. By this time, the conversation could go like this and I would not know the difference:

“Your dessert tonight is epoxied rice with a gasoline sauce, topped off with castellated nuts. Paired with this is a Tri-Nitro-Toluene, from the original Nobel plantations.”

To which my more esteemed dining mates respond with the appropriate nods and grunts, while I slam down more liver preservative and say, “Oggay mang thanksh. Tha wazall reeeeeeellllly yummy! M?”

The Exception Proves The Rule

Yet another phrase used more than understood, this does not mean that some exception to a rule proves it in the sense that it proves that it is correct or is right or valid.

Instead it means that some exception to a rule, when stated, proves that the rule exists. For example, hearing the following statement:

"Tonight all sailors are allowed to stay ashore until 11pm"

you recognize it as an exception to some rule, perhaps one that says they must be back on board by 10pm most other nights.

The idiom lost something over time when changed from Latin to English and then to modern times. To 'prove' not only means to show as correct, but also to validate, to test, or probe. The exception stated above leads one to believe that there is a rule to which that statement is an exception.

Ed Levy At the Distrikt Hotel

The lighting was bad. What can I say? The music was great, though. The bassist's name is John - I did not get his last name.

In Memory Of Jojo: 5 Years

It was exactly five years ago today that I drove from work home at Cara's urging to find my home - and three of those of my neighbors - smoldering in ashes. Jojo, our loverbird, perished from smoke inhalation or heat or both. Fifi made it to the basement and was rescued by the firemen. No one was home, no one was hurt, but three apartments were destroyed utterly and a fourth had major smoke and water damage, and the rest had smoke damage.

Google now has images of what the apartment looked like after the fire. The red arrow points to where I lived, the blue one to where the fire broke out.

Though we lost a lot, including the bird, we were immediately helped by coworkers and friends from all around. The Red Cross, the community, the High School, friends at IBM and abroad, and our families all chipped in to help us get back on our feet. We are still hurting a little, financially, from the damage, but we are grateful for all that we have in our friends and relations.

We miss you, Jojo. I hope I treated you well in your short time on this planet.

POST-SCRIPT:

I took the sat photo from Google, as I mentioned. Earlier today I sent the same image to one of my former neighbors in that complex but I did not trim the image as I did above. She pointed out the irony of the ads next to the picture (click on the image to see a larger version):

Westcott Beach State Park and Campbell's Point, April 2010

Lola imagines life as a gull.

The Milliman's cottage.


Campbell's point as seen from Westcott Beach.

In Memory Of Malcolm

I don't like to argue about whose cat is best - that sort of thing is a pissing contest left to those who have something to prove - but my own favorite feline familiar, Malcolm X, was among other things a six-toed terror and an astute judge of character; anyone he didn't like, I didn't much care for either. Above everything was his cool, Paul Newman-like demeanor. One day my (former) father-in-law explained that he did not want to let his Yorkshire Terrier near Malcolm for fear that the cat would be killed. "They're known for being relentless hunters and they never turn their backs on their prey," he said, authoritatively. Malcolm lay sleeping lightly in the dog's bed on the back porch, opposite from where the dog was locked away in a bathroom for safety's sake. I decided to experiment. I let the dog loose, and he tore across the porch toward Malcolm. Malcolm remained prone until the moment the dog was in reach, then sprung to like a cobra, pasted the canine upside the head with his great paw, and sank back into the dog's bed as the Yorkie ran back to his bathroom, whimpering. I shut the door to the bathroom on the fallen pooch, sat back down next to my speechless father-in-law, and said not another word about it. Not that day.