jamie lawrence-howard • highly absorbent redundant and superfluous verbiage • clogging tubes since 9.1.98
kirk’s pumpkin on the left, my pumpkin on the right. click on the thumbnail to enlarge the picture.
i’m a strict adherent to the “triangles and variations thereof” school of pumpkin carving. kirk believes in making his pumpkins look as much like ike from south park as possible.
i’m looking forward to actually having trick-or-treaters — we’ve never had them in all these years of living in new york, but in our coop we are guaranteed to have them.
i’ve seen this enough recently that i think it’s a trend-in-waiting.
after years and years of everyone wearing headphones and listening to their own music in their own world, i’m seeing a growing number of younguns going headphoneless on the subway. not with big boom boxes, but with small devices with a small external speaker.
i kind of like it, as long as it’s occasional and not too ubiquitous. i don’t mind listening to snatches of music that i’d never hear otherwise. and i like it when people figure out slightly subversive ways to buck the current trend. my biggest objection is that the speakers are of such crappy quality that the music sounds awful — i’m guessing that the volume is maxed out so the speakers sound blown.
now, if this ranges toward half the world carrying boom boxes on the subway and turning them up loudly, then i’m going to have a problem. and i’m most definitely in the minority on this, i’m sure. but on a small scale, i’m ok with the concept.
kirk’s been doing a great job with the florida vacation recap, with more to come, so as promised i’m kicking in with a bit of a food overview.
dinner on landing was at a branch of the orlando ale house. big cheap beer and big cheap food — kirk had an extremely brown fried seafood platter, and i had a not-too-bad shrimp cajun fettucine alfredo thing, and $2 fosters on tap. slow service and a noisy atmosphere, although it was good to watch a bit of the tail end of the baseball game. food was edible but not much more than that.
friday of course was epcot food & wine festival day. yummo, as rachael ray would chirp. walk around the world showcase at epcot and eat appetizers all day. how can you beat that? while we didn’t eat absolutely everything, we put a pretty good dent in it all. each plate was ~$3, and kirk and i of course shared all plates.
in order of consumption, with occasional notes:
» Canada: Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup (cheesy and bacon-y); Maple Glazed Salmon with Roasted Corn and Arugula
» Greece: Spanakopita
» New Zealand: Lamb Slider (awesome gravy and scone-y roll)
» Oklahoma: Three Sisters’ Soup (corn, beans, squash); Seared Buffalo with Scalloped Wild Onions
» Morocco: Bastilla (like a samosa, with middle eastern flavors and phyllo dough), Walnut Baklava
» Italy: Insalata Caprese, Lemonato
» Germany: Debriziner Sausage with Sauerkraut in a Pretzel Roll
» Turkey: Meze (can’t remember the specific ingredients, but this is definitely misnamed. meze means “appetizer” in Turkey, so it’s a generic description rather than a specific dish. come on, epcot. step it up.); Manti with Yogurt Sauce (a kind of turkish ravioli — this is a specific meze)
» South Africa: Durban Spiced Chicken on a Skewer (nice Asian flavors); Bobotie with Mango Chutney (spicy minced meat with an eggy topping); Spice Cake with Marinated Fruit (best dessert of the day).
» Ireland: Boxty (a potato pancake) with Bacon Chips and Kerrygold Garlic and Fresh Herb Butter; Irish Cheese Plate and Brown Bread with Apple Chutney and Kerrygold Irish Butter; Bunratty Meade Honey Wine (far too sweet for me but still tasty).
» Chile: Shrimp con Pebre Salsa (like gazpacho with shrimp minus the liquid); Tomaticán with Manchego Cheese (tomato and corn stew). Both were outstanding.
my favorite was, surprisingly for me, oklahoma. they were there to celebrate their 100th anniversary of statehood. the three sisters’ stew was the most flavorful dish i had all day — absolutely delicious. and the buffalo was tender and tasty, and the onions were really strong and balanced the slightly gamy buffalo well.
that evening, we had tickets for the south african wine event, basically a big tent with about 25 south african wine producers, each of whom had 2 or 3 wines to taste. definitely took advantage of the spit buckets on that one. i like the wines but found them uniformly too alcohol-tasting (their wines averaged 14% alcohol, strong for wine). kirk is the wine guy, so maybe he’ll give details of the ones we liked. the food was buffet style — good but basically an expanded version of what we had sampled from the south africa nosh stand.
lunch saturday, with momfla, was at the festival de sabor in ybor city. big plates of asada-style pork, moro (black beans and white rice), yucca, and platanos (fried plantains). it was a booth run by a local restaurant, and unfortunately i don’t know which one, but the food was amazing.
dinner saturday was a papa john’s pizza in the room. we were exhausted, watching the baseball game, and craving convenience. not a bad pizza as chains go, but totonno’s has nothing to worry about.
lunch sunday, again with momfla, was in ruskin at by the bay cafe — mom and i had been before, but kirk hadn’t been. they specialize in real maryland crab dishes — soup, authentic crab cakes, etc. we had crab dip as an appetizer, along with an order of battered and deep fried portobello mushrooms. crab dip worderful, mushrooms ok. momfla had a small plate with broiled salmon (i think), kirk had crab cakes (all crab and practically no breading — good stuff) and i had blackened grouper (perfectly cooked, moist and flavorful). there were sides of coleslaw and potato salad, the choices we made from the list of sides — both were great in that mayonnaise-y, southern way. you never know where you’ll find quality food. this place is definitely worth the trek.
kirk and i wanted to have a great last-night-in-florida meal, just the two of us, preferably romantic, so we asked the desk clerk at the holiday inn express in bradenton for a recommendation. she chose the beachhouse on bradenton beach, and she could not have made a better choice. it’s old florida — they have a stretch of undeveloped beach, and you sit on it outdoors at a table, watching the sunset and the moonset, listening to an acoustic guitarist playing island-ish but not jimmy buffett music, drinking boat drinks, and eating wonderful food. kirk had never had conch before, so despite his aversion to bouncy food, we split an appetizer of conch fritters. the conch in conch fritters is ground, so he didn’t have to avoid the bounce as it wasn’t there. light, not at all oily, and delicious. next stop for kirk: gator tail. for the entree, we both had surf and turf. the steak was just ok (ribeye, not the most flavorful cut, though it was tender and well-prepared) but the grilled lobster was remarkable. perfectly cooked, unadorned except for the drawn butter. we had dessert (can’t remember what — kirk?) and coffee. service was attentive and friendly — our waitress gave us a customized list of local beds-and breakfast that we’ll probably check out come winter.
obviously, we ate very well on the trip. but extravagantly. i must admit that the excess affected me negatively — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. and on my return, i did a three-day brown rice fast and haven’t had meat since, except for using up some chicken broth in a weekend soup kirk made.
and then i read the omnivore’s dilemma, which kirk had bought and was lying about the apartment.
sometimes the signs are all pointing a certain way. i’m going to be vegetarian again for a while. we’ll see where it leads.
from my yahoo! home page this morning:
City leaders have scrapped plans to do away with the Sioux Gateway Airport’s unflattering three-letter identifier — SUX — and instead have made it the centerpiece of the airport’s new marketing campaign. The code, used by pilots and airports worldwide and printed on tickets and luggage tags, will be used on T-shirts and caps sporting the airport’s new slogan, “FLY SUX.”
make lemonade out of lemons, and all. were they given any other options?
Sioux City officials petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration to change the code in 1988 and 2002. At one point, the FAA offered the city five alternatives — GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY — but airport trustees turned them down.
my god, how could you turn down “gay”? think of the glbt tourist dollars that could be coming your way. sioux city: the new p-town. key west of the extreme north.
you can’t make this stuff up if you try.
from the article:
Business school dude, listen up. Forget shadowing me. You’ll never be like me, because I’m one of a kind. I came out and they broke the mold. But if you want to learn how I operate, do the following. Quit business school. Go work at some shitty electronics company and learn how to source components. Travel to India and seek enlightenment. Grow your hair down to your ass. Take LSD. Smoke pot. Live on a commune. Sell your van and start a company. Put yourself in danger. Create a situation where if you fail you’ll be unable to pay your rent and you’ll be out on the street. Struggle to make payroll. Get screwed by suppliers. Learn to screw them back. Bounce checks. Run out of money. Go hungry. Be scared.
wow. i really wish i had the guts to do that. but i’ve resigned myself to the safety of dronedom.
via daring fireball, a wired story about one man’s quest to beat the decades-old cannonball run cross country driving record.
from the article:
For nearly two years, Roy — a pale, shaved-headed, independently wealthy ectomorphic veteran of the Gumball 3000 road rally — has obsessed sleeplessly over every detail and thrown money at every possible electronic connivance. His mission is intended as a triumph of the mind over the base adrenal impulses of common speeders. His route is nothing like the careless line a spring-breaker might plot across a Rand McNally — it’s a painstakingly GPS-mapped and Google Earth-practiced manifest desti-document, waypointed mile by mile for detours, construction, and speed traps.
it’s an amazing piece of writing that hunter s. thompson would have been proud to hang his name on.
from a news article about the school shootings in cleveland:
Coon, who was white, stood out in the predominantly black school for dressing in a goth style, wearing a black trench coat, black boots, a dog collar and chains, she said….Police believe Coon, wearing a Marilyn Manson shirt, black jeans and black nail polish, targeted the two teachers he shot Wednesday.
why is it that all these kids who shoot people in school are always dressed in black?
it isn’t, that’s why. it just sticks out in your mind that they are, because the press always notes the clothing and style of the kid when it doesn’t conform to their perception of societal norms.
what does dressed in black have to do with his motives for committing the crime? absolutely nothing. maybe, however, this has something to do with it:
The Department of Children and Family Services was called to Coon’s home in 2000 because he had burns on his arms and scratches on his forehead, the newspaper said.
maybe someone should have spent more time on that. but why bother, you know. the weirdo dresses in black and listens to marilyn manson. try to ignore him.
it’s easier.
it’s a topic that came up during the last democratic presidential candidates’ debate, which took place at dartmouth college.
of course, the college students’ logic started with “well we can fight in iraq, so why can’t we drink?” not flawless logic, but they do have a point. it might be a better point if they were actually fighting in iraq, instead of buying drinks anyway at an ivy league college with money from the trust fund, but still, not a bad point.
from the article:
“Legal age 21 has not worked. Most people at the age of 21 have already consumed alcohol,” said John McCardell, the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. McCardell now heads a nonprofit organization started in January called Choose Responsibility.
The group is calling for lowering the national legal drinking age to 18 combined with education about the effects and risks of alcohol.
“The current drinking age has just driven the drinking out of public view,” McCardell told ABC News. “It has meant that instead of drinking in bars or restaurants where there is supervision, it’s happening in dorms and dark corners.”
He argues that young people should be given alcohol education, much like driver’s education, and then rewarded with a drinking license, for which they become eligible at 18.
i agree. people are going to have their vices. might as well have them be publicly acknowledged and supported. prohibition didn’t work in the ’20s, i mean the 1920s, so why would a prohibition of a segment of society that will find ways to drink anyway work any better now than it did then? in fact, because it’s a segment of society rather than all of society, you could argue that it would be expected to be even less successful.
and it is. ever heard of a college student that couldn’t find alcohol if they wanted it? personally i think other countries are far more enlightened on this subject. rather than make the consumption of alcohol a bogeyman, many foreign kids grow up having a drink or two, a glass of wine with dinner, a celebratory belt now and then.
and there’s no mystery surrounding alcohol then. lots of kids, myself included, grew up using alcohol, and i’d bet that the rate of alcohol abuse among that group is lower than the average.
i was 17 when i went to college, and the legal drinking age was 18. i had no problem getting served in bars, without i.d. how? i went to bars for lunch, sat quietly and had a sandwich and a single draft beer at a time when the bar was glad to have the business and could not have cared less who was buying. and then, when i returned at night, they didn’t card me. because they knew me from lunch.
if you want to drink, you’re gonna drink. you’re gonna find a way. might as well bring it out into the open, and stop criminalizing normal human social behaviors. if 18-year-olds are drinking legally, you have a far better opportunity to ensure that they are drinking responsibly, because they will be drinking publicly rather than privately.
in the ny times this morning, this story about the homophobia-based mistreatment of gays and lesbians in nursing homes and assisted-care facilities.
from the article:
Elderly gay people…living in nursing homes or assisted-living centers or receiving home care, increasingly report that they have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide.
Some have seen their partners and friends insulted or isolated. Others live in fear of the day when they are dependent on strangers for the most personal care. That dread alone can be damaging, physically and emotionally, say geriatric doctors, psychiatrists and social workers.
i hope that i don’t end up in a nursing home or assisted living. but the odds are that i will.
i hope i’ll have enough money to be in a nice, nonthreatening place. but the odds are that i won’t.
maybe i should look into long term care insurance for kirk and myself.
kirk and i had a wonderful evening last night with our mortgage broker from chase, dinika, and her friend luigi. it had been a long day, and i was a bit tired and slightly cranky, but thankfully kirk was sparkling and witty and carried the day for both of us. we met at the black pearl, had a few drinks (me: newcastle brown; kirk: espresso martinis), finally ordered the much-vaunted lobster roll which was indeed quite yummy, and talked about a wide range of subjects: shanatram, the book dinika loaned us and that we both love; movies; new york living; past and present loves; our lifelines (dinika reads palms).
and kirk and i told the story of how we met. short version: me in south florida, kirk in nyc, i see hedwig in nyc, i leave message on hedwig.com message board, kirk the webmaster responds, the rest is history.
except that apparently wasn’t it. kirk has put his old design for the hedwig.com site up on his site, thestagingarea.com, and after the events of last night, i was poking around that site this morning and found this:
Name: Jamie
E-Mail: picaman_AT_csi_DoT_com
City/State: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Home Page: https://www.queerspace.com
Date: Mon Mar 22 14:50:12 1999
How you found us: Too much Grain and Brita; I don’t remember
Wrote…
HATAI was the last of 7 shows i saw on my just-ended NYC trip and DAMN i’m pissed cuz if i’d seen it first i would have just seen it again and again. it’s the most amazingly well-done show i have EVER seen….i’m a complete hedwig convert
so apparently i didn’t initially find the message board — i just left a brief message in the guestbook. and truly, if kirk hadn’t been so diligent in emailing everyone who posted on the site, and hadn’t taken the time to make it more than a cursory email, we might never have met.
i wish i had that email, but i don’t. it must have been a great email, though, for me to bother to reply with something thoughtful that kirk then in turn responded to.
and so on.
thanks, kirk, for taking that moment. it changed my life, and all for the better.
another in a series of andy samberg shorts for saturday night live, in case you missed it. this one’s called “i ran”, and imagines a love story between samberg and mahmoud ahmadinejad of iran, where by ahmadinejad’s account there are no homosexuals.
hilarious stuff, and i love how samberg does this without a trace of irony and with no knowing winks, which of course makes it all the more ironic, and definitely not homophobic.
and a hell of a catchy tune as well.
via kottke, the “secret site” for the upcoming new movie “wall-e” from pixar.
i generally hate it when companies do crap like trying to make me “discover” their site to accomplish their guerilla/word-of-mouth marketing campaign objectives, but this site is exceedingly well done and a riot to click through.
it interests me that the movie will have no dialogue. i’ll have to see how they accomplish that, but given the complexities of a worldwide movie release, it’s a strategy that’s brilliant in its simplicity.