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The Meadowlands Fair.

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Oh, it was bleak. You remember the Bloomsburg Fair I went to back in the day? That had all those amusements and cool foods, but it also had local charm like pie bake-offs and 4-H club. The Meadowlands Fair, however, had none of those nice things. It felt like very con-artist-y and ripoff-y. It was all rides and impossible-to-win shooter games and sideshows. Yes, sideshows. Don’t believe me? I took pictures.

I refused to go into the sideshow, but my friends did and they said it was very, very lame. For example, the two-headed lady? One lady stood in back of another lady and rested her chin on the front lady’s shoulder. But it wasn’t a total loss. I saw an adorable ride in the kiddy section.

Aww, a teeny ferris wheel made from little pumpkin houses. And, of course, there was the food. I learned many new and exciting things. Like KFC did not invent the “meal in a bowl” concept.

And, in keeping with every fair’s policy that food must be served on an impaling device of some sort, there was a booth with some high-class stabbed cuisine.

But the redeeming item at the fair was, without a doubt, the deep-fried dill pickles with horseradish dipping sauce. Oh. Ohh. So good. It was my first time having this delicious fried delicacy, and it was so worth it. It was like the best components of fried food with the vinegary tang of dill pickles. French fries seem so blase next to it.

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Africa, Part 4: Kruger and Durban.

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Finishing up Kruger: The last night there Cricket got jiggy with the big braai-ing grill and cooked up a great big slab of meat (all this occurred during Owl Appreciation Hour and OMG did you SEE my OWL?!??) but it was very very dark out there, so he wore his headlamp the whole time. I’m telling you, that man can make a headlamp sexy.

Speaking of very very dark, the stars were AMAZING. Imagine being in a place the size of Rhode Island with less than fifteen thousand people. Seriously, you could see The Milky Way. It was phenomenal. Cricket tried desperately to take a picture of the stars (30 second exposure time, using a tripod, making everyone in the nearby housing turn their lights off, etc.) but while the picture is good, it really doesn’t capture the sheer mammothness of the night sky. But you can see The Milky Way! Those are the smudgy cloudy-looking bits. Soooo breathtaking.

I really hadn’t seen very many monkeys my entire trip, so I was delighted when on our last day, a troupe of vervets showed up at our house. I was the only one who was excited. They are very, very naughty beasties. They spend all their time plotting how to get into your personal space and steal your foods and valuables.

Plotting…

A brief stop with the plotting for foraging…

Then the continuation of the plotting…

And finally success. I heard a scream, and then a flash of gray out the door. This particular monkey got into the kitchen and stole some hot cross buns. Look at how he sat in the tree juuuuust out of reach and ate it, all cocky-like. “Yeah, I got your hot cross buns, heh heh heh.” Snotty little humanoid.

On our drive out of Kruger we drove past a large watering hole with buffalo on one side and marabou storks on the other. One marabou stork bravely ventured over to the buffalo side, but was politely but firmly forced off by a buffalo bouncer who got closer and closer with those big horns of his. Wise marabou, he got the hint.

Watering hole, buffalo side.

Watering hole, marabou side.

And that was the end of my four days in Kruger Park. Every time I go there, it’s as magical and awe-inspiring as the first time I went (when I was five.)

Cricket and I then headed to Durban, which is a major city in South Africa. There’s not much for me to say about Durban, we were only there for two or three days, and most of that time was spent chillaxing with a lot of good food, but there are a few key points I’d like to touch on. Durban still has a great deal of the nifty colonial architecture of the previous century. Say what you want about the European oppressors, they build a nice building. With lovely tin roofs and stained glass windows and intricate railings.

Don’t you just want some tea and crumpets when you look at those? And you see those gorgeous tropical trees everywhere? Mom pointed out a particular one that was so cool. It looked like an acacia, but it had these softly fuzzy orange-to-yellow berries or flower pods on them. So incredibly beautiful. This is the tree:

And these are the berries/pods:

Another thing we noticed in Durban is that since Africa is going back to its roots, it’s getting rid of the European-named streets. However, everyone is accustomed to those street names, so they’re doing it slowly and in an interesting way.

I assume eventually after everyone has gotten used to the new names, they’ll get rid of the yellow signs, but for now it looks like this.

The final thing I wanted to mention in Durban is the beadwork. Beadwork is a big, BIG artform all over South Africa and the continent, but there was this one shop in Durban that just blew my mind. They had plants and monkeys and chandeliers and wall mirrors and things that looked like Chinese shrines, all beaded, and some with lights. I bought a small beaded baobab from them (I’m having it shipped, it was too big for my luggage, I’ll take pictures when it gets to my apartment), but I really wanted the human-sized, lightbulb-filled baobab. This is a poor picture, but trust me, if it was in a restaurant in New York, you would spend the whole meal there staring at the tree and ignoring your dinner companions. It’s an engrossing tree.

Next up: The KwaZulu-Natal province.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Two things.

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

1. I was watching the Ace of Cakes marathon on Monday and kind of half-paying-attention while working on other things, and Duff was talking about making something and probably giggling (he does that) and… wait, is that a jellyfish cake in the background?!??

Dude. AWESOME. I don’t care for many of Ace of Cakes cakes because I find them too cartoony, but seriously, that jellyfish cake is super-rad. I realize only the dome top part is edible and the rest is structural, but who cares? JELLYFISH CAKE. I bet Snorth is cursing herself right now for not having that as her wedding cake.

And yes, I’m quite aware they are not called jellyfish anymore, they’re called jellies. But “jelly cake” means something totally different. For those of you kids playing at home, starfish are now called sea stars and seahorses are now called… something else. I forgot. I can’t keep track of politically correct ocean nomenclature.

2. I saw Slumdog Millionaire. I saw it based on the reviews I read. You can read one here. Note the words they use in the review: “beautiful, sad, sweet, uplifting, and thoroughly entertaining”. Yeah, sounds lovely, doesn’t it? I’m going to totally ruin the movie with a mess of spoilers right now because no review I read did that and that caused me to have to choke back stomach acid while watching this film. IT’S AWFUL. The first half is disgusting and the second half is boring and a bit silly, plot-wise. Let me first clue you in on the disgusting bits: Jamal the Street Child lives in absolute squalor in Bombay (it’s still Bombay at that time). He is defecating at the local lavatory (a shed over a pit) when his favorite movie star lands in a helicopter nearby. His brother locks him in as a prank, so to get to see his movie idol, Jamal pinches his nose and drops himself into the pit of human excrement, then crawls out underneath completely covered and rubs his liquid-filth-encrusted-self on members of the crowd surrounding the movie star in an attempt to get to the front. I’m turning green just thinking about it. Shortly afterwards, we see Jamal and his brother and mother washing at the local watering hole, when apparently a religious riot breaks out and Jamal sees his mother get whacked in the face with a hunk of wood and die. Jamal and his brother see other people being torched and killed in front of them, and on their way back, they see their mother’s corpse floating in the water. Wait, it gets better. Jamal and his brother are living at the local dump when a man shows up and offers to take them in. He teaches them to sing so they can sing on the street for money. However, blind children get twice as much money, so when he finds a particular child with good singing skills, he drugs them and blinds them with boiling hot water and a spoon. OH MY GOD. This is all in the first half-hour. How can no one mention this in any review anywhere? The rest of it is all about finding the one true love of your life you are destined to be with and fate and all that whatever and it ends with the lovers being together and a bollywood dance number. Aside from Dev Patel, who plays the adult Jamal and is excellent, this movie blows and if it wins a slew of Oscars I’m going to be very, very unhappy.

Addendum: I am very, very unhappy.

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Four things I’ve noticed on television today.

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

1. Sean John/Diddy has a new perfume out and it’s called “I Am King”. I have low self-esteem and now I think I know where it all went. Piffy Puffy Poofy got it all, and maybe someone else’s as well. Goodness gracious, that’s a lot of narcissism.

2. While watching the Christmas commercial for Victoria’s Secret, I realized Heidi Klum can have twenty-seven kids and a stroke and she would still be the hottest woman in the whole freakin’ world. Heidi is HOTT, all caps, two “t”s.

3. Just saw a commercial for Jim Carrey’s new movie Yes Man. I don’t really want to see it, but there’s a scene where Jim goes to a Harry Potter costume party and for a split-second someone wearing a Dobby mask walks through the shot. Frankly, that’s kind of awesome. Now I think I’m going to have to see it. Oh, and I just watched the preview… yeah, I’m going to have to see it. Expect a review eventually.

4. Have you seen the recent Campbell’s/Progresso soup ads? SO MUCH DRAMA. Soup commercials used to be, “Our soup is delicious! Try it!” Now it’s like the east coast/west coast rap wars.

“7 out of 10 people prefer our soup!”
“No, they don’t, they prefer ours!”
“Your soup tastes crappy!”
“Well, your soup has msg!”
“Your mother has msg!”
“Oh, kiss my soupy-”
*bang bang bang*

People, it’s SOUP. It’s a wet version of “real” food. Build a bridge and get over it.

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Commercials.

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

I work in advertising and I watch an inordinate amount of TV, so even though I have TiVo, I still end up watching many commercials. I would like to comment on two of them that have recently caught my eye.

1. Subway Sandwiches, please stop referring to your subs as “yum rockets”. That’s not hip lingo, it’s vaguely pornographic and nauseating and it makes the viewer want to eat at Quizno’s. Thank you.

2. Pantene, a six-step routine to make your hair voluminous is not “easy”. It takes like, an hour for me to do all the things Maria Menounos recommends. Would you like to hear my hair styling tips? I wash my hair with shampoo and conditioner, towel-dry… that’s it. There’s some brushing in there too, but that takes maybe fifteen seconds. No root-spritzing, no curlers, no blow-drying in sections. Maria, call me, I’ll tell you all about the real meaning of easy. Wait, that didn’t come out right.

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Cookie.

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

I have decided to go on a diet, which began yesterday. Snorth has been having great success with her diet (go Snorth!) so I too am making a go of it. I do not which to be mistaken for a large ghost anymore. A more slender ghost, maybe, but not a poofy one.

Day 1 was okay, I was all hyped up, but today I just feel… well, I think this video will tell you how I feel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrPeQ14n5tE

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Blogs I think are nifty.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I often peruse the Ntarwebs for new and exciting bloggery and whatnot, and I figure you do too. So I will share some sites I frequent that maybe you will like as well. Some have strong language, so be forewarned.

The Impulsive Buy
“After sucking on it a little bit, the smooth texture of the lollipop turned into coarse sandpaper, which was kind of off-putting. It was like the lollipop grew a five o’clock shadow in my mouth.”

Izzle Pfaff!
“An American Girl. That is a really awesomely white cast. It’s like staring at a glacier.””

One Good Thing
“There’s gonna be a Thomas Kinkade Christmas movie this winter. I just hope all the buildings in the movie appear to have raging conflagrations within their walls.”

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NPR and Jonathan Coulton.

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

I was going to write this past week about my travels to Israel, but I got slammed with a project that ate my head and digested it from Monday to Friday until I was a crispy frayed exoskeleton of myself. I was so busy I didn’t even get a chance to check my emails all week. Brutal, I tell you. But the project got done and went nicely and all is hunky-dory, so now I can return to the world of the living and tell you about my recent activities. And I’m editing my Israel photos to share with you as well, so there will be a plethora of posting in the next few days. Rejoice, three readers, rejoice!

I drove my parents to the airport on Saturday so they could fly out to California, and on the way back I listened to their radio. My dad has two stations in his presents: WQXR, the classical music station, and NPR, the… NPR station. On Saturday WQXR plays opera all afternoon, which I really don’t care for at all, so I listened to NPR. I realized something that I’ve been fighting for a long time. I don’t like NPR. I want to like NPR, I really do, it’s just they’re just such drowse-inducing intellectuals, I crave to listen to all of Eminem’s albums back to back afterwards. Traffic was backed up so I got to listen for two and a half hours. Because Albert Hofmann had just died (the inventor of LSD), they played an hour of psychedelic music, all of which I could name in the first two beats (yay me!) The songs were: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Magic Carpet Ride, Purple Haze, White Rabbit, and White Room. The DJ talked about his magic mushroom trip where he discovered the meaning of life in his vomit, and that was all fine. Then came on All Things Considered. Here’s where NPR proved themselves (once again) to be the most grating thing on earth. Andrea Seabrook did a ten-minute piece on the tomato salmonella outbreak where she interviewed… her mother. And they chatted about tomatoes being a pivotal part of their lives. For ten minutes. In those voices that they speak in. These voices. I wanted to shoot myself. Patton Oswalt (my most favorite comedian in the whole wide world) does a thing about NPR on his DVD, Feelin’ Kinda Patton, that is just BRILLIANT. Rent the DVD if you can. It’s about fifteen minutes in. He sums up my response far better than I can.

Addendum: I found a clip of the Patton Oswalt NPR thing on the YouTubes! Hurray!

On Saturday evening I went into the city to see Jonathan Coulton with B. and his wife D. and their son K. It was in the Highline Ballroom in the Meatpacking District, which is one of my least visited parts of Manhattan for three reasons: One, even though they hose down the sidewalks, you can still smell the rotting blood faintly in the air; Two, it’s become very trendy so everyone is young and hip and thin and I feel like a troll doll with fluffy orange hair whose ass is impaled on a fifth-grader’s pencil, and; Three, there are cobblestones all over. I am super-clumsy and I fall down on plain old asphalt, so I suppose on cobblestones I fall down, shatter and then burst into flames or something. But I like Jonathan Coulton very much, so I braved the hipsters and meat-funk and cobbles and somehow made it to our dinner destination, and I’m glad I did, because it was phenomenal. Really. It’s called Highline, and it’s a Thai fusion restaurant. The decor was lovely, the food was delicious and plentiful and not expensive, the iced tea with lychees was nummy, the waitresses were nice and friendly, it was just great. I also recommend that if you go there, go early, because we went at 5:00 and by the time we left, it was half-full. One can only imagine how packed it gets at 8:00. It’s on Washington Street between 13th Street and Little 12th.
Then we went to the concert. I don’t much care for live music (uncomfortable chairs, loud, etc.) but this had to be one of the best concerts ever. Really. Everyone had a good time: the audience, the performers, everybody was just thrilled to be there. The opening act (Paul and Storm) performed for about an hour and were amazing and funny, and then Jonathan performed for a hour and a bit and was terrific as well. He had eight people performing behind him playing ukeleles (the Kristen Shirts Ukelele Army, I believe they were called) and at one point they also played kazoos. And you could sit at tables and have dessert items and no one stood and blocked your view, a fantabulous time was had by all.
If you are a geek, especially a computer programmer/video game player geek, you must discover Jonathan Coulton. Here are some of his finest works:

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/primer/listen/

I recommend “Code Monkey”, “I Crush Everything” (I found out at the concert it is a song about a squid who hates himself, which might be the greatest idea for a song in history), and “Mandlebrot Set”. They don’t have my favorite song there, “I Feel Fantastic”, but you can buy his music on his website, you don’t even have to brush your hair or interact with other humans. Bonus!

Major shout out to one of my newest readers, J. George, who is on bed rest for the next bunch of weeks due to ultra-uber-pregnant with twins. Good luck J. and enjoy this nice quiet time to yourself.

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Let’s talk about food.

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

1. There is a Korean restaurant right next to where I work. Actually, there’s a ton of Korean restaurants near where I work, since I work in Koreatown. But my co-workers like to frequent this particular establishment, so I went with them. They had these amazing bowls of noodles and soup, it looked so darn tasty. I took the menu on my way out and tried to see which noodle dish was the one I was so enamored with, and I saw this:

DEAR KOREAN RESTAURANT OWNERS:
Repeating a festive array of the words “special” “brown” and “sauce” does not help me to know what the hell I’m going to be eating. Those three words are pretty cryptic as it is. That was my favorite part of the noodle menu. There were other similar entries, such as “Seafood Soup”, “Spicy Seafood Soup”, “Extra Spicy Seafood Soup”, “Extra Seafood with Spicy Noodle Soup”, “Extra Seafood with Extra Spicy Noodle Soup”, “Extra Seafood Noodle Soup”, and my personal favorite from this genre, “Extra Seafood Noodle Soup with Gravy Soup”.

2. I know a lot of picky eaters. For some people I know it’s faster to list the four foods they do eat then to list all the foods they don’t. However, I have noticed that almost all the picky eaters eat Italian food, specifically food with lots of Parmesan cheese grated on top. I don’t understand this because to me, Parmesan cheese tastes and smells like shaved foot callus. And not just any callus, oh no, the shaved foot callus of a long-distance runner whose foot has been in a sweaty hot sneaker all day. If I was fussy about what I ate (and I’m so not, I’ll try anything, even stuff I’ve disliked before) I would avoid food that tasted like stinkfoot. No point to this, just something I’ve noticed.

On a totally different note, did anyone watch the season finale of House last night? Did you cry? I cried a little. That was some mighty fine acting on Amber’s part. At one point it looked like her face would split in two. I won’t spoil it yet, but maybe in a few months or two I’ll revisit this episode and we’ll talk more about it.

Update: Just to prove my point about the fact that I am a good sport with eating, I will eat Parmesan cheese if it’s shaved on a salad or something, and I just talked about how it tastes like stinky sneakers. See? Good sport.

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My Saturday in Manhattan.

Monday, March 31st, 2008

I went into the city on Saturday to meet my friend B. and go to the bead show at the Metropolitan Pavilion (where I went for the chocolate show last year). I got to walk down my favorite block while I was there, 18th Street between 5th and 6th. I went into the used bookstore and as soon as that familiar smell of slightly moldy books hit my nose, I was right at home. The bookstore, should you want to drop in and check them out, is Skyline Books:

They have a shop cat. If you were on the fence about visiting them, this should push you over the edge.

Right next door is Utowa, a flower shop for the trendy and tasteful. I went in and looked at the vases and their ridiculously gorgeous flower arrangements. And they had one of the orchids I was talking about, my favorite orchid, I mentioned it in the Macy’s Flower Show post. I tried to take a picture of the orchid, it came out a little blurry, but you can still appreciate the evil goodness.

Across the street is a used CD store, where I just wandered in to kill time and then proceeded to buy a whole stack of CDs. They were between $3.99 and $6.99, and some of them were new, still in the wrapping. So super-terrific, really. The CD shop, called Academy Records, has a phenomenal collection of classical CDs, as well as rock, pop, jazz, spoken word, etc. They also have a big pile of videos and DVDs too. And I assume they have records too, because it’s in their name.

I eventually made it over to the bead show and met up with B. and I promised myself I wouldn’t buy beads unless there was something really really mind-blowing. And I was doing really well too, pottering around behind B. watching him buy bits of this and that and telling myself how good I was being until. There’s always an until. There was this guy selling ammonites. Here’s a bit of info on ammonites:

http://www.stonesbones.com/amm.htm

And I was fine until I saw them, all sitting there. See, I’m a die-hard fossil nut. I loves me some ULTRA-DEAD things. And I’m redoing my kitchen backsplash and countertop (there’s a point here). I’m redoing it with big tiles (because I cannot afford granite, butcher-block, stainless steel, zinc, copper, cement, etc.) and I’m going to incorporate some geode slices and (point tie-in here) ammonites into the backsplash and countertop. And there they were, taunting me with their sparkly not-alive-ness. And they were small and only $6.50 each. So I bought a few. Like, twenty. Hey, you’re not my mother, shoosh you! All my pride in my restraint went right out the window. But who cares, I got ammonites! Whoo hoo!

After B. and I had decided we had lightened our pockets enough, we decided to go out to dinner (it was 4:30). I had been to Soba-Ya once and I remembered it being fantastic, so I recommended we go there. It was right on the other side of town, but the weather was peachy, so we headed over. They lived right up to my memories. We had three appetizers, our bowls of noodles, and three desserts. The appetizer that I’m still dreaming of was the pork belly with a poached egg in sweet soy sauce. I don’t normally eat meat, but I would eat this everyday for the rest of my life. Ohhh, it was melt-in-your-mouth good. The dessert that I thought was the best was the honey wasabi ice cream. The honey and the creamy ice cream nicely balanced the ping! the wasabi put in your mouth. Oh, and we showed up as they opened the door for dinner. Halfway through the appetizers the place was full and by the time we left there was a long line. So if you ever go there, get there early. Like, when they open.

I would like to thank B. for putting up with my constant prodding during the bead show and when we were walking around the city. He has a nice quiet child, so I can’t imagine he is accustomed to someone going, “Oooh! Oooh! Lookit!” every three seconds. Bless his patient soul. I bet he went home and bought stock in Ritalin. Or joined a monastery that has a vow of silence so people weren’t JABBERING AT HIM ALL DAY. But anyway, thanks B. Next time I’ll bring my muzzle.

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