Monday, December 10, 2007

Breakfast with the rude sausage and the magic pube of destiny

Warning: The following dissertation contains immature content. Not recommended for sensitive viewers.

I feel like a Christmas goose. I’m stuffed. Spent the entire weekend eating.

Friday night. Orange ginger teriyaki stir-fry, a bottle of cheap Australian Shiraz and a bowl of popcorn with extra extra melted butter and extra extra white cheddar dust – this to accompany a viewing of the movie Superbad which lived up to its name, being criminally stupid but at which I laughed my head off (I’m embarrassed to confess).

Saturday. Breakfast. A slice of blueberry French toast and a couple cool rubbery bacon strips stolen from Steve-o’s leftovers on the way out the door (this is starting to become a tradition).

Lunch. A multi-grain bagel with cream cheese and a big fat vanilla hazelnut coffee with 18% table cream – this with the Hamilton NaNoWriMo group at Infusions coffee dungeon – the least lit coffee house in the universe, where those with laptops are lit by an eerie blue glow and where the very cool Viorica demanded to know why I hadn’t been on her LiveJournal lately. She’s sixteen but far cleverer than 98.5% of adults I know.

“Because you’d been posting kidstuff,” I said. “And I started to feel like a creepy old man lurking on a site for young girls. That’s why. But since you’re inviting me, I’ll come back.”

Next – a brief visit with the I.S. who was on the job and trying to accomplish some work while I tried to keep my hands to myself – each of us with moderate success.

Dinner. Met up with Professor Plonk and Captain Vino at the Black Forest Inn where Plonk was served the biggest goddam schnitzel I ever seen - probably knocking the Earth’s rotation slightly askew. This is why you had to reset your watch on Sunday.

A quick jaunt up the street and we’re at DesignGuy’s annual holiday party where not only the halls were decked but the entire house was delightfully arranged in bold whimsical-yet-sophisticated eclectic fashion – as it is year round. At this house the Christmas tidbits don’t stand out like a sore blinking thumb but are right at home.

Their kitchen renovations are finally complete and apparently well worth waiting for. Let me try to wrap up the state of their kitchen with one subtle statement. Here goes: The interior of their oven matches their countertops. Wait, wait! Don’t go back and read it again. I’ll just say it one more time. The interior… of their oven… matches their countertops. Okay? I’ll let you imagine the rest. Moving on:

The bash was catered and my wineglass topped up endlessly with Wolfblass Yellow Label – one of my absolute faves of course.

“So, did you get Wolfblasted?” Plonk would ask the next day. I had to plead the fifth.

Menu highlights: Carmelized onion cheddar. Goat’s milk brie. Sage darby. Apricot blue cheese. All to die for. And the hot pepper jelly with cream cheese served on ginger snaps! No words to describe it.

Met the very excellent Doctor J and chatted with him intensely most of the night. He’s one of the very few people I’ve met with a promising grasp of the significance of the illusory content of this society. For a man presumably burdened with extensive investment in all things treacherous – career, marriage, material accumulation etc, his capacity to confront the horrors of ego and mask-wearing etc is wildly advanced. It was the mention of Buddhism, if I correctly recall, that led us into this unlikely discussion, much as the case was recently upon meeting Aequitas, a young fellow from the Nano group with courageous insight into the duplicity of mankind and who I hope will accept the invitation of guest writer on this blog!

While the loss of Poetry Coach was tough, being a lone outlet for productive dialogue on these matters that are central to my life and work, the appearances of Aequitas and Doctor J and this testimony to the philosophies of Buddha suggest that there are plenty avenues for exchanging ideas after all.

Not that I don’t have excellent friends who are willing to tolerate my musings – Plonk, Vino, Dr. Lock, Rockin’ Roddie and Spooky (or Jiggs in some circles) come to mind – but none are really in the same zone as I. There are significant limits to our commonalities.

And speaking of good friends - Spent the night in the Purple Petal Flower Jamboree Suite of Plonk and Vino’s informal bed ‘n’ breakfast.

The Cap’n still obsesses over his holiday baking plans. Sunday morning as we lounge in the living room he ponders the baking of apple pies.

“Cool it, bake-a-holic, before we launch an intervention.”

Now – as for my breakfast with the rude sausage and the magic pube (no - these are not Plonk and Vino’s new nicknames):

We hit Apple Annie’s for breakfast where the décor seems a tad incongruous (and by that I mean downright goofy) until you realize that what every framed image has in common is that they all contain an apple or apples somewhere within. Whoopee.

My menu contained something else entirely. It was stuck between the paper insert and the clear plastic covering – right at the site of the Salmon Benedict selection. It was a hair. A somewhat short, dark and rather kinky hair. The kind that falls, not from the head, alas, but from (gulp) elsewhere.

“Oh dear,” I said. “I think I’ve received a sign from above, telling me to have the Salmon Benedict.”

Plonk inspected the evidence. “Or are they telling you to steer clear of the Salmon Benedict?”

Good question. How does one interpret such a sign from above?

No matter. My heart was already set on the Hungry Man breakfast with a side order of pancakes to split with Cap’n Vino.

The Cap’n spies the image of an apple pie on the restaurant’s folded stand-up dessert menu.

“Look! An apple pie! It’s a sign from above. I’m supposed to cook apple pies today.”

Plonk and I inspect. “No dice, Cap’n. This isn’t a proper sign. There’s no magic pube of destiny present.”

The Cap’n is forced to stand down. There’s no arguing with the magic pube of destiny – or lack thereof.

I couldn’t finish all my hungry man breakfast plus pancake-and-a-half. Too much cheesy goodness late the night before.

Nor could I finish my dinner that night. I gave my coleslaw away to Pops. He took us out for dinner at Montana’s. His treat. The bro picked me up and took us to the folks’ for dinner but their efforts to re-architect their kitchen into the Taj Mahal II have run into overtime and the folks have lost patience with cooking and serving dinner in the hallway/family room as surrogate kitchen/dining room.

A couple tables away two scruffy long-haired teenagers wearing toques were drinking enormous beers – looked like 30-ounce drafts. They’d finished their second each as we were getting ready to leave.

“I want to see if Jay and Silent Bob are going to order more beer,” I said – and a little too loud. They both looked right at me. Oh well. I didn’t mean it as an insult. They looked like Jay and Silent Bob. Why deny it?

Oh yeah. Forgot about my rude sausage:

Image courtesy of Captain Vino and the Bell cellular network.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

looks kinda tiny. BWAHAHAHA sorry...

Babs Gladhand said...

There I was reading along smiling, even chuckling once in awhile, but then I saw the sausage. And that's when I spit tea all over my keyboard.

See? I'm all about he immature humor.

Kathleen said...

I get more news about the Captain here, than at his own blog. Just sayin'.