Costa Rica

I was just browsing over a few old posts and I realized I neglected to mention that I have now totally been to Costa Rica. I can report that it's a lovely place to totally go.

Not only are the people quite friendly, but it's choc-a-block with interesting flora and fauna, some of which are delicious, but all of which are quite intriguing. To be honest, I didn't eat a lot of the local fauna, but I stayed alert for unusual fruits to nosh on. My mom used to occasionally bring home weird and unusual fruits when I was growing up. We'd all come and try them out and usually we got sea-monkeyed by a star fruit or dragon fruit, but occasionally we'd learn that kiwis or mangoes were delicious and add them to our list of regulars. Sometimes mom would unaccountably learn something false, like papayas are delicious, and the rest of us would have to choke down fruit that tastes like mucus, but overall it was worth it.

So anyway, arriving at adulthood, I felt I had a pretty good handle on what the world's fruit is generally like. There are millions of versions of tiny oranges that all taste the same; a handful of reliable standards like apples, pears, bananas, peaches, nectarines and plums; and some more interesting if still standard "tropical" fruits like mangoes, pineapple, papayas (blech). Finally, there are the weirder options like lychees, ugli, star fruit which never really caught on because they're awful, dull, or just not worth the extra effort.

So when I went to St. Lucia some time back and had myself a soursop, which is the best fruit on Earth, I felt a little betrayed. It was the same way I felt when I found out that cuttlefish are not just the source of those weird shells that look like soap dishes and wash up on beaches in England for no apparent reason. They are also astonishing alien-like beasties that can change both the color and texture of their skin, see as well as us, and already know the manner and time of your death.

That's why (the fruit bit, not the cuttlefish), when I go places I haven't been before, I want to try the fruit. The weird thing about Costa Rica is their utter reluctance to ply you with new fruit. So weird is this, that it extends to mangoes. I found this lack of mango frustrating, not because it's new and exotic any more, but because it was falling out of the goddamn trees whenever the wind blew. Nevertheless, we could not get served a plate of it for love or money.

Every morning we sat down to a platter of FANTASTIC pineapple, quite good bananas, papayas that tasted unremarkably like snot, and wholly inexplicable watermelon. I'd gaze wistfully out into the hotel parking lot where cars had started a reasonably compelling mango chutney using nothing more than gravity and the bushels of fresh fruit that had fallen from the trees during the night, and wonder what the blazing hell was going on around here.

I know where you live and I want my mango back, gringo!

I finally seized my chance when a troupe of white-throated Capuchin monkeys started shaking a tree for fruit and knocked some to the ground. Monkeys may be hella strong, but I wanted my fruit, dammit. I dashed across the street, grabbed a mango, and pranced away one mango richer and slightly worried about being chased down and gang-mauled by a tribe of feisty Capuchins.

It was delicious.

Now I'm back in the U.S. where I just heard about the Paw Paw which grows in like Ohio or something for godsake. What the hell supermarkets? You've got mango-like superfruits growing in my own back yard and you won't find and sell them to me because they're not created from seeds made by Monsanto?

Moving. It sucks.

Moving first myself and then my girlfriend in the last month has given me a keen insight into moving. It sucks. I've learned other things too ....

1) It truly sucks. I learned this first from everyone else. You know how science tells us childbirth is awful but that there's a part of women's brains that, for the preservation of the species (and because brains are misogynists), helps you forget that fact in the face of sexytimes? Well that part of the brain doesn't exist for moving. Nor does the part of the brain that edits what you say about it or when, apparently.

My friends, when I told them I was getting ready to move, happily assured me it would be fucking awful. Thanks, pals! When I asked my boss for a day off to prepare, she raised a hand to cut me off as though I'd told her a family member had died. Moving? Say no more. "Moving is hell," she admonished me. Even a completely random guy outside Staples who saw me and my sweetheart walking along with our freshly purchased boxes and bubble-wrap figured he should weigh in and explain, you know, in case we were otherwise without human contact. He'd moved the weekend before and could vouch that, "moving sucks!"

But of course, they were all right. Why you ask?

2) It takes longer than you expect. A lot of things take longer than you expect, adoption of the metric system, general acceptance of evolutionary theory, college, whatever. But unlike a lot of these things, which only take longer than expected in blue states, moving takes longer than you expect no matter how long you expect. It's like a weird twist of Zeno's paradox, but rather than resulting in never getting there, you instead find yourself cramming whatever you can lay your hands on in boxes or bags or, well mostly the trash, as the moving truck sways around the corner.

My girlfriend, who I'll be calling Alphonse from here on out, benefited slightly from my packing mayhem weeks earlier, because when I showed up and found her considering whether this knick-knack was a better candidate for the kitchen box or the things-from-my-mid-twenties box, I pooped. More than was strictly necessary, given how effing smart she is, I explained, nay insisted, that the gig was up and it was time to narrow choices down to the "is it coming" boxes and the trash.

3) Holy shit we live with a lot of trash! Alphonse and I each lived in a one bedroom. Hers was quite small and mine was a bit larger. I threw out (or recycled, you humorless harpies) around 8 large trash bags of junk I will never miss, along with three boxes of books that went to the used bookstore conveniently open for donations between like 10AM and 4PM, those precious darlings. Alphonse remarked that the process made her feel like a hoarder. So anyway, my best gal and I have agreed that we will do a monthly purge of our stuff so we don't find ourselves surrounded by crap come March. I suspect it's a lie we use to comfort ourselves, but I'll let you know.

The worst part of that is that the grand total of crap doesn't even include the TWO trips I made to the dump to get rid of a desk, two bookshelves, a dead hobo and god only knows what else.

WHEEEEEEEE!!!

4) Going to the dump effing rules!!!! Moving is a stressful endeavor that you're not good at because you don't practice. There are entirely too many choices about what to take, how to pack it, and where to put it once you're there. As the previous item suggests, a lot of stuff that you've hidden under the proverbial rug because you couldn't work out where to put it resurfaces and requires some dealing with. Take that shit to the dump. It's liberating as hell.

Once you arrive at the dump, you are a samurai. The choice is made. This desk will not be recycled or dropped off at Goodwill. This desk will be excised from the list of your possessions and all that remains is to execute your good choice. And the execution requires no paperwork, no planning, no stress. I arrived and began fretting about the correct protocols for disposing of my stuff. The protocol, apparently, is you park in the general vicinity of a huge pile of refuse in the Fort Totten area, extract the unwanted item from your car, take a couple of discus thrower spins for good effect and spin the large wooden plane that was lately the top of your desk as far as you can away from you and toward the center of the heap. It's primal; it's final; and no one there gives a rats ass if you could have reused or recycled that crap.

5) Unpacking takes forever and chicks need lots of closet space. There's no further insight for item 5. It's just true. Plan ahead.

Stepdad sitting

This week has been either busy or terrifically dull, depending on outlook.

I moved on Saturday just in time to sleep in the new spot for two nights before hopping on a plane home to Michigan where I've been looking after my stepfather. He's suffered from blood-clots in the lungs and minor strokes, as well as a lifetime of anaphylactic shock brought on by the merest hint of exercise. He's generally okay, but needs help. It's tedious, but mostly not too bad.

Stab directly into heart in case of aerobics!

Still, I'm anxious to get back to my largely unpacked apartment and start positioning stuff and getting organized. I'm moving in with my girlfriend, which is exciting, but she won't move until probably the beginning or middle of next month, which still gives me precious little time to get things organized just right before she comes and ruins the couch fort I'm building. Girls!

The kitchen will be my domain since I'm the one who finally threw up my hands in frustration and organized her kitchen so I could cook there. I also had to buy her knives because the vaguely wedge-shaped slabs of metal she was using were better suited to tenderizing meat than cutting it, and honestly, if you were trying to slice cheese, you'd have been better off with a mallet. I actually don't understand how so many people get by with crappy crappy knives. With a good knife you can do just about anything in the kitchen. A bad knife just causes you to cut yourself, or sometimes helpful sorts who happen along to inquire what's taking so long.

Now, the week is coming to a close and I'm feeling both a bit bored out of my skull and as though I've done nothing at all all week. I had big plans for accomplishing things while I was here, but most of my attention's been focused on ye olde stepdad. I obviously have time, as I'm writing here rather than doing what I should be up to, but this is sort of therapeutic. Shortly I'll dive into what I'm supposed to be doing and see what I can salvage from this week running aground in Michigan. Then later, we'll go for a walk, assuming my stepdad's throat doesn't close up when I mention the possibility of a little exercise.

Yoga

It's taken me longer to get to yoga than might be expected by those who know me.

Friends might reasonably expect me to take to it the way I did with Tai Chi, hackey-sack, volleyball, gymnastics, Kali, ultimate or any of the other left of center sports I've enjoyed over the years. Obviously, I've never been one to stick to sports that present as particularly masculine. I did volleyball and gymnastics in high school followed by intramural crocheting and varsity menses in college. In one indelible memory from grad school, I experienced a bright moment of lucidity while enjoying the crap out of a gift from my sister (a subscription to Bon Apetit - manly!). A terrifying certainty came upon me that I had to go immediately to the local kickboxing gym and man up a little. I don't really subscribe to sticking to appropriately gender-rolled sports since I think you should play whatever's fun. Still, I think it's good to play both sides of the divide for balance's sake.

So, yoga's a little feminine, true but I think the real issue is that it's extremely hippie. The physical element is demanding, but not nearly so much as keeping my smart mouth shut when people ask me to thank the universe or open a third eye. Also, and this can't be stressed enough. I'm not flexible and was quite fearful about yoga.

A few years ago I ran afoul of a friendly but dumb karate instructor at a dojo in NYC. He "helped" me with my stretching to the point where I felt a sort of disconcerting twang from my groin and continue to be essentially unable to separate my legs beyond about 80 degrees, side to side. This wouldn't be a big issue in my life except that I really do like kickboxing and it's tough to practice Muay Thai if you can only kick your opposite from the knee down.

Anyway, I picked up yoga about three months ago when a friend of my girlfriend suggested she and her boyfriend go with me and my gal to yoga together before brunch. I can't make enough jokes about my yuppie life here, so go ahead and insert your own. Based on the setup, it's structurally impossible for any of them to be over the line - by all means, use the comments.

So that's how I got started. I quickly learned that I'm unusual at yoga. I can't, for instance, sit comfortably cross-legged on the floor (very rudimentary for most yogis), but I can do a handstand, bow pose (bridge), or crow pose. These are very rudimentary for gymnasts. In fact, the crow pose wasn't called either yoga or gymnastics by my gymnastics team members; it was called "fucking around" and was kind of a trifle.

So what happens sometimes in class is that we start off doing stuff that I'm okay at - forward stretches and such, transition into difficult stuff that I'm great at, and end with cool-down poses that I fucking gasp and cry at. I'm a yoga idiot savant.

Recently however, I've been moving just toward the idiot end of the scale. I think, sadly, that I may have to start stretching before yoga. That began as a bon mot but may shortly become my life. Somewhere along the line I seem to have pulled the entire right side of my ass, which limits mobility somewhat. I was hoping yoga would help me strengthen the appropriate accessory muscles and loosen up the rest, but what I think it's done is to convince me I need physical therapy.

There's a fine line

Between ratatouille and rancid vegetable mush. Apparently that line is quickly crossed when you leave the ratatouille in a pot on the stove for two days.

Blech.

Ratatouille, for you goggle-eyed, peasant-class, boob tube monkeys who only know it as the name of a delightful children's movie, began as a French vegetable stew. It's the un-deconstructed version of the dish at the end of that same movie. To make it you stew a lot of vegetables together, sometimes after frying them, but that's sort of up to you. If ever there were a delicious French peasant repast, it's ratatouille and crusty bread with butter and a few bottles of table wine.

I went and bought the ingredients the other day at that bastion of fine produce, Safeway. In D.C. there are multiple Safeways. The one in Georgetown is the "Social" Safeway because I guess it's a good place to meet slutty people who cook or something. My Safeway is, I believe, sometimes referred to as the "Soviet" Safeway because of the history of crappy selection. It's not bad these days, but the produce is not going to wow you. That's okay, it's a stew. As long as the vegetables are relatively fresh and you can get some garlic and basil, you're okay.

As an aside, I'm sick and tired of D.C.'s farmers markets. Where I'm from, the Midwest, which has the distinction of being near a farm or two, farmers markets were places you would show up with money to meet farmers who showed up with vegetables still dirty from the walloping great field of earth they'd just been pulled out of. The half with too many vegetables gave them to the half with too much money in fair trade and you went home with some hideous, but cheap and delicious veggies and fruit.

I went to the Dupont farmers market and they have cedar planked salmon and overpriced, sad looking strawberries. Everything is marked organic; Everything is expensive as hell; And everything bears that slight taint of being touched by at least one earnest yuppie too many.

So, back to the Safeway where yours truly is trying to answer questions from the Latina checkout lady who has, with the same sort of instinct that draws cats to allergic people, intuited that my Spanish is exactly good enough to give her a good laugh. She opened simply enough by asking if I was a vegetariano. Porque no tuve carne (I didn't have meat). I, quixotically, tried to explain that, no, I wasn't a vegetarian, but today I was making a delicious French meal called ratatouille that didn't require meat. I may have gotten it across to her, but she did end up asking if I spoke French.

Anyway, the ratatouille was a disaster of burned garlic, missing basil and rather drab vegetables. Nevertheless, and here's one of the key selling points of this dish, it came together nicely. It wasn't great, but even bad ratatouille paired with some bread and butter gets the job done. I ate it for two days, during which time my gut inquired frequently and loudly as to what the hell I thought I was up to. It made one exercise class in particular kind of touch-and-go. Still, plenty of fiber and deliciousness even if I was producing high-grade construction-ready adobe in my spare time.

Finally, yesterday, I got a mouthful of the ratatouille that I'd been leaving on the stove (not for philosophically grounded reasons, but because I'm an orangutan) and realized that somewhere during the night my french cuisine had transubstantiated into compost.

So, here's how to make ratatouille:
- cut up a bunch of the following: 1 egg plant, 1-2 summer squash/courgettes, a couple of bell peppers, some mushrooms, 6 cloves of garlic, a handful of parsley and a handful or more of basil (expert tip: you can't really add too much basil to anything). This is a rough meal, so things don't have to be chopped up finely. Cut the eggplant, for instance, into rounds about half an inch in height and then quarter the rounds.
- Open a tin or two of tomatoes, and look, this isn't a highly engineered dish here you prancing tit, stop fretting about whether it's one tin or two. See how you like it with one and try it with two next time. That's cooking.
- (Second expert tip: put the chopped up eggplant into a bowl and either sprinkle salt on it or drop it into boiling water for about 30 seconds. This helps alleviate the bitter taste you sometimes get with eggplant).
- lightly saute the 6 or so cloves of garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil (a little butter thrown in has never hurt either, you pompous ascetic) in a very large cooking pot.
- Add some salt and pepper and drop in the mushrooms and courgettes (oh, courgettes are the English term for what you goofs call zuchini - we speak English here in the U.S. of A. so, er, love it or leave it, etc. and so forth. Also, Freedom Fries!)
- Saute until you've got a little brown on the mushrooms but before you've totally burned the garlic. Burned garlic tastes like failure in cooking, so avoid it as sedulously as possible. Expert tip 3: You will never use the word sedulously in conversation.
- Add the eggplant and whatever else I've forgotten to tell you to add so far, including the tomatoes.
- Turn the whole mess down to a medium simmer. Add chicken stock or water if it's not kind of watery and go away and have a beer or two. Check in as necessary.
- When is it done? Taste it occasionally. It's a stew so it's got the consistency of thin chilli. All the veggies are okay to eat raw, so basically you're just adding heat to mix the flavors.
- Eat with crusty bread and irresponsible amounts of butter.
- REFRIGERATE THE LEFTOVERS. I cannot stress this enough.

The final result should look EXACTLY like this:



Or you can use that computer network I've been hearing so much about.







Disclaimer: If you burn yourself on my ratatouille recipe, or learn the hard way that you're allergic to anything in it, it serves you right. I'm not your life-coach. Exercise some critical thinking when you do stuff. I take no responsibility for your dumb mistakes. Mine are trying enough.

Digital Love Help

I just signed up for theicebreak website. Maybe ironically. I'm not sure yet.

As far as I can make out, the site encourages you to take the pulse of your relationship from time to time then makes recommendations based on how satisfied you say you are with things like the amount of quality time you've spent with your [insert term of affection of your choice here - you can use "sweet baboo" as my boss does if you're drawing a blank].

I rated my relationship as healthy, since I'm shortly moving in with my [cutie pie] and frankly over the moon about it. However, she's out of the country for a couple weeks, so I rated my overall satisfaction with amount of quality time as lowest of the things I was asked about. Theicebreak suggests an evening of boardgames, which tells me two things: First, theicebreak is an elderly lady in a floral print dress (it's second suggestion was to take a bath or soak my feet!!).

Second, it has never seen me or my [sassy little monkeypants] play a board game. My [boo] and I are seldom competitive with one another, but we are in fact both crazy competitive where stupid games are involved. I fear theicebreak has found an efficient, if boring as hell, way to break us up. Thanks a lot website!

My next experiment is to tell it I'm finding our physical relationship lacking and see what terrible terrible idea it suggests. "Have you considered hugging?" I'll get back to you on what it comes up with.

In other ways, the site seems like email for couples who are at that stage in their true love where they have run out of things to talk about and decided it was best to stop. It encourages you to share pictures just for your [beloved] - and for the news media if you're Anthony Wiener or any number of ethics-touting/aggressively anti-gay GOP heavies. It also gives you ideas about "Icebreakers" to share with your partner. Some of these seem like things you should have talked about on dates 4-8. Others seem like excuses for fights.

In the former camp are questions like "what's the sexiest part of your partner's body." Guys, it's their personality. In the latter are softballs like "would you rather grow old with someone you settled for or be alone when you are older because you never found true love." Holy crap. That's specifically not a question for your [dear sweet smoocheyface]. It's a question for overly earnest college seniors in a WB movie that reimagines the Great Gatsby as a bittersweet rom-com set at NYU all about the trials of joining adulthood.

Still, sometimes technology confounds our best predictions. Twitter, as it turns out, has very little to do with the rampant narcissism everyone thought it would fuel and be fueled by. I'll wait and see. I'm pretty sure my [north, my south, my certain azimuth] will not be going for this nonsense. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons I like her so much.

Storytelling

Like me, but I'm funnier.

A while back I stood on stage and told a bunch of people a story, and thankfully they laughed.

About 5 weeks prior I started a class run by speakeasy d.c. on storytelling. We had our "final" at Chief Ike's Mambo Room and Pastry Parlour (or something).

The story I told was about two times I got my ass kicked - I mean actually, not metaphysically. The "profs" got us up on stage ahead of time so we'd know how far to stand from the mic and how not to freak out under the glare of the spotlights or the scrutiny of strangers. We were supposed to say our name and our favorite color. I quipped that my favorite color was fear of public speaking. Then I went and drank.

Mostly I drank soda because my blood-sugar kept sinking, but I preceded it with a strong salutary draught ... for nerves.

Then we storytellers got to go upstairs and consider our stories--and anxieties--for a while. I realized mine didn't have a very good ending--the story or, consequently, the anxieties. Luckily, with the help of the alcohol, I managed to think of how I didn't really care.

The night was supposed to open with the strongest storyteller from the class, who I have to admit was not me, and then I was supposed to help carry us over the finish line toward the end. Instead, the woman going first came in late and ended up going right before me. Fantastic.

My girlfriend tells me I did a very good job, and although that sounds about as credible as your mom telling you you're smart and handsome, you should know this about my girlfriend: She's honest, sometimes regrettably so. And I'm really good at reading her.

So, I have to concede that my story went over well. I remember hardly any of it. When my name was called I adopted the same trick I used when I jumped out of a plane a while back: I reined my considered event horizon in to about a distance of 2 seconds. Before my stupid limbic system could explain how I was going to fail, I took a breath and dashed for the stage. Take that, brain!

I certainly got some good laughs at the points I expected. I also got a laugh at a spot when I really didn't expect one, which is odd. I wish now I hadn't been suffering a nearly mortal case of nerves and could have remembered not just that people had laughed, but when. I supposed I'll have to get up at a more regular Speakeasy event and try again.

Just like skydiving, I remember little, I think I enjoyed it and I kind of want to go again.

Speaking of, my friend is telling a story tonight at Town for a Speakeasy called Eye of the Tiger, which focuses on winning and losing. I expect it will be a lot of fun and any of you in the D.C. area should come on down and have a look. You will like it.

http://www.speakeasydc.com/

Baconalia?

You may have heard that Denny's is launching some fancy bacon-related promotion of foods with bacon in them. If you craved a bacon sundae, Denny's now has half the answer to your problems: A bacon sundae. Whatever terminal brain disease is making you crave a bacon sundae is still yours to contend with.

What weirds me out most about this bacon extravaganza is not so much the fact that they've put a ghastly amount of bacon in a frankly irresponsible range of dishes (because I've given up on the American people's ability to think before they jam foodstuffs in their faceholes). It's the oddly classical name.

I'd love to see the pie chart (mmmm, pie) that shows what constituents of the "Denny's demographic" (or perhaps the "Dennygraphic" ... or maybe, "Fat Racists") think of when they hear the term Baconalia. Because that's what Denny's is calling this meaty madness.

It's a clear reference to Bachanalia - the ritualistic madness that seized devotees of Bacchus/Dionysus, and I just don't imagine a ton of Denny's eaters catching that. I don't mean that (entirely) as a harsh on folks who eat at Denny's but even among my friends who are over-educated pointy-head sorts, I'm not sure more than 50-60% would immediately get the reference.

I like to imagine some thwarted comp. lit. major sulking during an ad meeting. When the campaign manager winds up the meeting by asking, "Great, we've got the bacon sundae all squared away, what're we gonna call this thing?" our hero snorts quietly, almost to himself, "baconalia?"

And then Joe Manager replies, "sounds good," and a weirdly classical name is born for an ad campaign that makes literally no other reference to Pan, Bacchus, Dionysus or any other element of Greek or Roman mythology.